They were to have taken delivery of their brand-new VW in October. It was now probably driving around on war business somewhere. The Waterman was full of blue ink. Jochen had left it behind in the desk. Lost in thought, Jutta drew a couple of hearts on the blotting paper.
Gradually, everyday life began again. The world of Onkel Toms Hiitte, still intact, won the upper hand. Jutta seldom left it. Her days flowed calmly on, divided between Frau Gerold's bookshop and the little Wilskistrasse apartment. The war was going on its victorious way, fortunately far from the Fatherland itself. Even the blaring fanfares of the Reich Radio brought it no closer. What did were hitherto unknown delicacies from allied or conquered countries. Frowein's fruit and vegetable shop was suddenly selling persimmons: no one knew how to eat them. And they had artichokes on sale, and fresh figs. Familiar foodstuffs were available in abundance: only tea and coffee were in short supply. Diana Gerold got both from a woman she knew at the Swiss Embassy.
They closed the shop at one on a Saturday. Then Anja Schmitt came to fetch Diana to play tennis. And we're going to the pictures afterwards. The Zeli is showing a new movie with Zarah Leander. Want to come with us?' But Jutta was going into the city centre. Isabel had promised to bring her back a pair of shoes from Rome.
The Jordans were living on the Kurfiirstendamm, just as Rainer had predicted. He opened the door himself. 'Jutta, you've come at just the right moment. I'm cooking an early supper. I brought spaghetti back from Italy, parmesan too, and we'll have genuine Chianti with it.' The UfA studios had sent him to Cinecitta for negotiations over some films. 'Isabel is staying on in Rome for a couple of days.'
She knew the apartment from earlier visits with Jochen. The big drawing room had modern furniture: pale calfskin leather, white oak, Plexiglas, a few antiques, and as the crowning touch a television set. It looked like a radio with a kind of opaque-glass pane beside the loudspeaker. 'One of the few in private ownership.' said Rainer proudly. 'It cost me six hundred and fifty Reichsmarks. The other forty are in the Berlin field hospitals. They don't show much except for army reports and a Sunday programme with the pretty title 'Transmitting merriment, bringing joy'. Seems they're going to expand programming after the war — they'll even show feature films.'
He put a few drops of olive oil in boiling water and fed the hard spaghetti in until it softened and folded under the water. Tomatoes, garlic and tarragon were simmering in a saucepan.
As antipasto, they each had a can of tuna, calamari and olives in a piquant sauce. 'It's the most delicious thing I ever ate,' Jutta told him enthusiastically.
They have all these things fresh in the Cinecitta canteen.' He poured Chianti. 'They're filming very interesting things there. Some of it's trash, of course. The latest sentimental piece has Beniamino Gigli singing and languishing as a Roman taxi driver. It's sure to be a hit here too. I was supposed to be negotiating a co-production. Hans Albers and Alida Valli as a German-Italian couple. With a dear little Japanese girl as their adopted daughter. The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis bears some strange fruits.'
And the Italians go along with this tosh?'
'They politely suggested I might approach the Spaniards. They'd rather work with the French. Conrad Jung is not best pleased. He was to direct, although he doesn't speak a word of Italian.' Rainer grated parmesan over the spaghetti, frowning over the task and looking delightful, as usual. And there was that tingling again.
He had brought back an espresso machine that you had to turn upside down as soon as the water rose in it. The brew was pitch black and very hot. Jutta drank it, sipping carefully. She put her cup down. 'We never got as far as coffee that time, did we?'
He knew what she meant. 'We never got as far as anything that time.'
'Let's make up for it.' She began to undress.
'Don't forget I'm an elderly gent in my mid-thirties.' He unbuttoned his trousers.
'I'm twenty-five and I want you.'
She draped her legs to left and right, over the arms of the chair. He knelt between her thighs. His erect penis turned slightly upwards; he guided it with one hand, rubbing the glans against her clitoris with circling movements. She relished the sensation that promised fulfilment as it grew stronger, but went on and on. The glans moved further and lingered between her lips. He did not move, and by that very fact brought her to the verge of a pulsating orgasm that she didn't want just yet, much as she was responding to him. He withdrew, and then thrust right into her. His staccato movements shook both her body and the chair, making its springs squeak. She looked down at herself, saw his hard prick parting her blonde pubic hair again and again as it thrust in, heightening her desire until it was intolerable and release came — but there was more to come.
When she came out of the bathroom, fully dressed, he was standing by the window in his dressing gown. 'Unfinished business — we had to deal with it sometime,' he said, without turning round.
'Once and for all,' she agreed.
'No repeat performances.'
'Of course not.'
The glass of the shop window was miraculously intact. Jutta stood among the books in her stockinged feet. She opened the third little window of the Advent calendar. Outside, two small girls were pressing their noses flat against the pane, counting the days till Christmas. Only the children could still look forward to it. Adults were in a state of anxiety, somewhere between dwindling hope and growing fear. The incessant Allied air raids made Berlin purgatory in the days leading up to the Christmas of 1944. Hell itself still waited in the wings.
She put the calendar back between Rudolf Binding's On Riding: For a Lover and Goethe's Elective Affinities, books which she had decorated with a few sprigs of fir and some tinsel. Yawning, she climbed out of the window. A British air raid had kept her in the cellar all night, and she hadn't had a wink of sleep. She was also tormented by toothache. A filling had fallen out, and there were no dentists left in Onkel Toms Hutte. The younger ones were with the forces, and the one old dentist who had come out of retirement fled to his sister in the country soon after re-opening his practice.
'Perhaps they'll have some aspirin in the pharmacy.'
'Take a Eumed, Jutta, that'll help just as well.' Diana Gerold offered her the tin tube of tablets. And do go and see my dentist.'
Diana had been urging her to go for days. Jutta kept putting it off. Dr Brauer's practice was in the city, which meant three-quarters of an hour by U-Bahn. No one liked to leave the deceptive security of their immediate surroundings. including the generally inadequate air-raid shelters.
'Well, if you really insist.' She wound her silk scarf round her neck and put on the fox fur. The lined ankle-boots had been donated from Frau Gerold's wardrobe. She went up the slight rise of the shopping street to where the ground ran level, bought a return ticket and climbed down the wide flight of steps to the platform. The train came in. She got into one of the yellow no-smoking carriages. The smoking carriages were red. Four small children were chasing noisily around a man home on leave. He looked well-fed and content. He was stationed in Norway. His wife looked anxious and worn out. She was wearing a brightly embroidered, sheepskin coat that looked as if it didn't belong to her: it was obviously a present her husband had brought home.
Fresh snow had fallen overnight, turning the suburbs into a landscape dusted with icing sugar. In the city, it had already turned to a dirty-yellow slush that was being cleared away by horse-drawn snow ploughs.
Dr Brauer had his practice on the second floor of an apartment building in Budapester Strasse. The secretary at reception was expecting Jutta. 'Frau Gerold rang to say you were coming. There's another patient still to see the dentist before you. Please would you wait in the next room.'